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Update to Edhat's Comment Voting

Hello readers! We have a new announcement regarding our comment voting and policies.

Some of you have written to us sharing your feedback on downvoting of comments. We listened and we've made some adjustments.

When we relaunched edhat's new website we decided to give our paid subscribers the power to self-moderate comments. It gave our edhat nanny a little break and allowed users to decide what was helpful on the comment board and what violated our policies. When a comment received a number of downvotes, the nanny was alerted and the comment was temporarily removed until the nanny could review it.

Unfortunately, a small number of users took advantage of this and downvoted comments that did not violate our policies. We have now amended this so the comment is posted live until edhat nanny can review it.

Paid edhat readers can still use the flag function at any time to alert the edhat nanny to a comment they feel violate our comment policies. The downvote function will now currently serve as a simple dislike or disagree button.

We've also added that any comments mentioning downvotes and asking "who downvoted this?" and "why was this downvoted?" will be deleted. It's shocking, but sometimes people disagree... even on the internet. Don't take the downvote personally.

For reference, all of our comment policies are listed here. Any comments or questions about these policies or if you wonder why a comment was deleted, review these rules. You can always email us at ed@edhat.com with any other questions.

We greatly appreciate your feedback, it helps us grow and better serve the community! Feel free to get out all your downvoting comments below on this article as they'll be deleted on future articles :)

48 Comments

Same 6 people are still downvoting my current posts. That's okay, I got out of high school a long time ago and am not too worried about my popularity or whether or not I am downvoted. I just didn't like it when they could use the downvoting to suppress positions they didn't like. I only downvoted things that I thought were mean-spirited or offensive. New system is working great!

Edhat commenters are unlike any I see in the many interest-based forums I participate in. The variance in online behaviors is much wider and wouldn't be acceptable in those forums. I suppose it's due to the general nature of Edhat and more common in "news" websites than forums. With the need for eyeballs to generate revenue, establishing guidelines/rules must be a fine line. That said, it would be interesting to see a histogram of #posts versus unique IP address (leave user names and addresses out). Then look at any spikes and see what you can see. Cool project for an intern or a school project.

I am left to wonder how Edhat is reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes, concerning a nanny who can be a man or woman. I am adamantly against blanket stereotyping of people as is often done in such categories as race, gender, or religion. I only saw one reference here referring to Nanny as "her"; if the person doing the nanny duties is a woman I think that fits the situation.

Certainly I am not the only Edhat commenter who wants to know the truth of this:--------My question for Edhat:------"@Edhat Staff. I am curious to know if Edhat Staff sees who upvotes and who downvotes. Is there a tally kept of voters' actions? Is the voting anonymous or is Edhat monitoring that, too?"-----Edhat's reply: " We've asked but the Nanny has not disclosed that information, they're very secretive. -ed staff"--------Anyone else out there care to know if their up/downvotes are anonymous? Is Edhat keeping track of who votes and how?

If down votes are "I disagree" that's one thing; if they are political/personal, that's counterproductive to discussion. Everyone is entitled to their political or personal opinion even if it's ugly. When a comment gets down-votes b/c it's a sensitive subject for someone or is misinterpreted, or someone has an axe to grind, down-votes are like sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling nonsense syllables like a kindergartner.

@Edhat Staff: What I would like to see also (not meaning to hijack this thread, but too lazy to type you an email right now)----------Could you please figure out why sometimes the posting of a comment doesn't go through and then we end up seeing duplicate comments? (Duplicated because the commenter thinks it's necessary to hit the send button again.) I have figured out that if I don't see my comment send right away that I need to go back to basic Edhat menu and then my comment will show up. As we have all witnessed, not everyone has figured that out yet. Any way to fix this on your end?

My experience is once you hit the "SEND" button, if your post doesn't appear don't sweat it. It got submitted. To see it, just refresh your browser or click somewhere else in Edhat and you'll see your post on the right side of the page under the "Latest Comments" tab. There's probably a refresh handshake between Edhat's server and your browser that isn't being made.

Huzzah! Thank you, Lauren and Edhat Staff! This is indeed good news. I don't care about downvotes, but it gets annoying when comments are downvoted for no apparent reason, then removed. Certain posters seem to be perennial targets of these neurotics, who will (and do) downvote anything those posters write. Strangely, the targets are often the most benign posters. As FLICKA often reminds us, it would appear to be a matter of lacking self-esteem. ANYHOW, thanks again, Edhat!

Agree, except I think it would be interesting to see why someone disagrees with a comment. Explanations of the reasons for differences, the “whys”, are always interesting while simple agreements rarely are. I hope that aspect of the new rules will be reconsidered.

What's the point of having an agree or disagree button in the first place - since the original function (to alert the nanny to comments that violate policy) is now achieved by flagging? I see the same people being down-voted simply because of their user names; some of them could say, "The sky is blue," and receive a slew of down-votes. It's frivolous and cheapens this forum. It also creates drama and defensiveness. If the purpose of Edhat is community reporting, why continue with an unnecessary function that actually dissuades a fair amount of people from posting at all?

Except that Edhat seems to be more extremist than the majority of Santa Barbarans. So the number of downvotes on a comment is just a reflection of this bias. Given the number of critical comments here about the Mayor and similar topics and the fact that she has been handily elected to her offices supports that this bias exists. I think the more fair-minded among us have probably found other online forums.

Hi ABC109, thanks for your feedback! We have other uses for the up and down vote functions. The upvoting is used for online contests and the downvote function helps for comment moderation and hopefully encourages a diplomatic conversation. Unfortunately, there's no ultimate fix for negativity on the internet, but we'll test this out and see how it goes. Thanks again! -ed staff

Hi Cato9, all deleted comments have violated our comment policies. The Nanny has no political affiliation, she just doesn't tolerate hateful comments. Here's a refresher on our policies: https://www.edhat.com/about-edhat/comment-policies

Doxing is barely legal now Matt. ( depending on who is being doxed ) I also observed a lot of political bias reguarding who's comment get admined ,permanent deletion or comments being restored bashing one philosophy over the other... I also noticed unpopular opinions posted with shown handle has resulting in all subsequently comments being DV'ed for no apparent reason. I shall forever hold my tongue on the subject .